HOME
Thereis one subject no man mentions at the Front unless it be very casually,en passant. Even then it brings with it a sudden silence. There is so much, so very much in that little word “Home.”
If a man were to get up at a sing-song and sing “Home, Sweet Home,” his life would be imperilled. His audience would rise and annihilate him, because they could not give vent to their feelings in any other way. There are some things that strike directly at the heart, and this is one of them.
You see the new officer, the men of the new draft, abstracted, with a rather wistful look on their faces, as they gaze into the brazier, or sit silently in billets when their work is done. You have felt like that, and you know what is the matter. The symptoms are not to be encouraged in the individual nor the mass. They lead to strong drink and dissipation, for no man can preserve his inward calm for long, if he dwells much on his dearest recollections of Home. There is but oneremedy: work, and lots of it, action, movement, anything to distract.
Many a man has committed some small “crime” that brought him to Orderly Room because he allowed his mind to wander ... Home—and realised too fully the percentage of his chances of ever seeing that home again. The Front is not a garden of Allah, or a bed of roses, or even a tenth-rate music-hall as some people would have us believe. It has to be made bearable by the spirit of those who endure it.
There is enough that is grim and awe-inspiring—aye! and heart-rending, without seeking it. That is why we do not like certain kinds of music at the Front, why the one-time student of “intense” music develops an uncontrollable predilection for wild and woolly rag-time strains, and never winces at their execution however faulty. That is why the Estaminets sell so much bad beer, and so muchvin mousseuxunder the generic title of Champagne.
Men want to forget about Home, for they dare not think of it too much. I have never heard a man speak of Home without a little hush in his voice, as though he spoke of something sacred that was, and might not be again.
How often one heard the remark, a kind of apologia: “One must do something.” Yet, in spite of all they do to forget Home, they are least happy who have none to forget. Fortunately they are few. It is a strange provision of Providence that lends zest to the attempt at oblivion, and induces a frame of mind that yearns through that attempt for the very things it would fain forget!
After all, it is very much like the school-boy who longs for privacy where he can blubber unseen, and is at the same time very glad that he has not got it, andcan’tblubber, because his school-fellows would see him!
A superficial observer might think that the men at the Front are purely callous, intent on seizing lustily on every possible chance of doubtful and other pleasures that they can obtain. He may think that war has brutalised them, numbed their consciences, steeled their hearts. Or he may class them as of low intellect. In all of which he is wrong, and has utterly failed to grasp the morale of the man who lives to fight to-day, never knowing of a certainty if he will see another dawn.
The soldier knows that he may not dwell in his heart on all he holds most dear. It“takes the stuffing out of him.” So, according to his lights, he works very hard indeed to keep up his spirits; to forget. Notreallyto forget, only to pretend to himself that he is forgetting.
What good is it for the man whose sweetheart ran away with the other fellow to think about it? Therefore, Tommy rises above his thoughts, he puts them away from him—as best he can. And if that best is not all that people at home might wish it to be, surely some allowance may be made for what may be called the exigencies of the military situation!
Perhaps it is the last thing some people would imagine, but homesickness is a very real disease at the Front, and he may count himself lucky who escapes it.
“Wot price the Hedgeware Road?” says Bill, ruminatively, as he drinks his glass of mild—very mild—beer.
And his pal sums uphisfeelings in the one word “Blimey!”
If you have seen men go into action, not once, but many times; if you have heard them sing, “Ohmy, Idon’twant to die;Iwant to go Home,” “My Little Grey Home in the West,” and many other similar ditties, then you will understand.
The very trenches shout it at you, these universal thoughts of Home. Look at some of the names: Oxford Street, Petticoat Lane, The Empire, Toronto Avenue, Bayou Italien—even the German trenches have their Wilhelmstrasse! Each nation in arms is alike in this respect. Every front-line soldier longs for Home.
A singer whose voice was chiefly remarkable for its sympathetic quality, gave a concert within sound of the guns. A battalion, just out of the trenches, went to hear her. She sang several bright little songs, every one encored uproariously, and finally she sang one of those beautiful Kashmir love songs which go straight to the depths. There was a moment’s tense silence when she had finished, and then the “house” rocked with applause, followed by a greater trumpeting of handkerchiefed noses than was ever before indulged in by any regimenten masse. She had awakened memories of Home.
There are many who rest beneath foreign skies for whom all earthly homes are done with.Theyhave been gathered to the greatest Home of all.